I was in Miami recently at the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution society, and I saw two excellent talks about economic inequality. One, by the great evolutionary psychologist Martin Daly, was titled “Is it really inequality that drives variability in homicide rates”? His answer was an unequivocal yes: in social environments in which inequality (not poverty, but inequality specifically) is higher, people kill each other more. In the second talk, anthropologist Aaron Blackwell presented evidence that across different villages of the Tsimane (a small scale Amazonian society), higher inequality is linked to increases in depression, levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), social conflict, and failed pregnancies.

Both of these studies, together with a great deal of previous research (reviewed in the 2009 book The Spirit Level [1]), associate increased economic inequality with diverse forms of negative social outcomes, from drug addiction to teenage births to obesity to murder. As is typically the case with scientific research—especially if it has political implications—many people have disputed the evidence for a positive relationship between inequality and social dysfunction. I’m not one of these people; I find the evidence for this relationship to be very convincing. There are also good evolutionary reasons to expect this relationship: because success in the competition to survive and reproduce is measured in relative rather than absolute terms, negative outcomes like stress, anxiety, aggression, and general within-society conflict should tend to increase as inequality grows. I spend less time now wondering whether and why this relationship exists, and more time wondering why, given that it does exist, people aren’t more concerned about it.

Of course, a lot of people are concerned about it. The worldwide “occupy” protests of 2011-12 were largely reactions to inequality, and in a 2013 Pew 39-nation survey, a majority of respondents from most countries regarded income inequality as a “very big problem”. However, other evidence suggests that people are somewhat blasé about inequality. The same Pew survey also found that “nearly every public surveyed wants the government to focus on creating jobs or taming inflation as a top priority, rather than on reducing economic inequality”. This attitude seems particularly prevalent in the USA (which has much greater income inequality than most other Western nations): in a 2012 Gallup poll, only 2% of Americans named income inequality as the most worrying national economic problem.

Why don’t Americans care more about income inequality? Researchers from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research explored this question in detail in a 2013 paper [2]. They report that as inequality has been rising fairly dramatically in the USA since the 1970s, Americans’ support for increased income redistribution has not been rising and, if anything, has been falling. (However, less surprisingly, this support seems to have remained consistently lower among wealthier Americans). The researchers suspected that if Americans had more information about the extent of inequality and how it affected them personally, then they would become more supportive of redistribution, so they performed an experiment in which they provided this information to half of their participants. But while this better-informed group did become more convinced that inequality was a serious problem, their attitudes about redistribution didn’t change much. In other words, although being educated about the effects of inequality made them more likely to say that there was some kind of problem, it didn’t increase their conviction that anything should be done about it.

So why, then, aren’t Americans more concerned about inequality, even when they possess some knowledge about its negative effects? Here’s an explanation that, while admittedly superficial, is still intriguing (to me anyway): they think equality is boring. Inequality is dramatic: high stakes and big risks, dazzling successes versus bankrupt failures. Life is thrilling when soaring fortunes can be won or lost, even more so if you believe that people who become wealthy are being rewarded for their skill, hard work, initiative, and ingenuity. People want to side with and emulate the winners in these contests, not the losers, and redistribution policies are perceived as strategies for coddling the losers and tearing the winners down. Americans’ respect for competition and financial success reflects some of the core values that energize them and give meaning to their lives, and if these values lead to dysfunctional levels of inequality, that is a price that they currently seem willing to pay. What remains to be seen is whether the harmful effects of inequality will ultimately significantly damage American global competitiveness. The USA remains the most powerful nation in the world, but if more Americans believed that they could continue to maintain this position only by reducing economic inequality, then I suspect they’d start perceiving inequality as a much more serious problem.

(A version of this article will appear as the author's "Natural Law" column in the banking magazine Global Custodian).

I think it's because we have this idea that if you work hard you get rich and if you haven't worked hard you're poor. We watch people like Ophra or Chris Gardener and say "see if you work hard ANYONE can make it." That's the myth and wealth redistribution would be an acknowledgment of the fact that we cannot make it alone. It flies in the face of our individualism and stinks of socialism which thanks to the Cold War we all know is the worst thing ever. We've ALL seen the results of wealth redistribution - fall of Soviet Union (not really true, but it's part of our national story). So while we want to change inequality, we don't agree with the proposed solution to it. You approached it with the premise of if we care about inequality we will support wealth redistribution. I reject your premise entirely. I think what you have is a conflict of ideals and with that conflict comes a feeling of hopelessness because everyone is so caught up in that very premise/solution that they cannot think of another one. I think we need to change the system that allows people to become so incredibly rich while making others incredibly poor. It is disgusting that a bank can break into a woman's home thinking it was their reprocessed home, take all her things and then refuse to pay retail value for them. It is despicable corporations are considered people under the law. It is troubling that Super-PAC's even exist to determine the outcome of our elections. It is incredibly disturbing that our congress is allowed insider trading so that they make public policy a way to make themselves rich. It is a travesty that our manufacturing has been shipped overseas and now people are out of a job and the new employment that has been created are minimum wage jobs that cannot even pay the basic bills. People who work hard do deserve their paychecks, but why cannot we have employment available that gives them a livable wage?

The "Occupy" events were manufactured by leftists in the U.S. for the purpose of getting Obama re-elected. Notice how they just disappeared after the election? If one looks at that movement you will see all the usual suspects supplying money and leadership to get the loser activists with no jobs out there to make a show. The media amplifies it and all the sheeple eat it up. Election won, power retained, status quo maintained, no need for Occupy anymore. The losers go back to welfare and college, and well, being losers.

Involuntary income redistribution is theft, plain and simple. That is why at least the few rationally moral Americans left hate it. Charity is good, and when people can choose their own way to help, they often choose highly efficient charities that do the most good and that don't support the social problems the government creates. Years ago I read that the government gets only 36 cents of every dollar it steals for welfare to the people needing help (many of which truly are just lazy - I went to college in a poor town and it was shocking to say the least.)

Income 'inequality' is a non-issue. Who will decide what is equal? I know people who have worked 80 hours a week for decades to build their own company. I could never do that, so I work 50 and vacation a lot. Are you saying that I should make as much as my hard working friends who risked all on their company and eschewed relationships and hobbies to do it? Should my brother-in-law who works 10 hours a week, plays in bands and lives subsistence level make as much as I do? Most sane people would say no - at least I hope they would.

No, the problem in America is NOT income-equality, it is more education-equality, work-equality, effort-equality, self-responsibiliity-equality. Everyone I know who works hard and is responsible makes a good income. Of course it is different depending on how the market values the service, but if you want to switch careers you can do that if you choose. The excessive taxes and regulations here have done more damage to the employment picture than anything else. As usual, the government is the cause of the problem and more of it will make it worse.

Take a good look at America - almost everywhere you see strongholds of Liberalism you will see more poverty, more despair, more inequality, more victim, more violence. The richest in America are the hollywood elite, almost exclusively Liberal. The most violent towns? Chicago, Washington DC, New Orleans - they have the most gun violence, the most poverty and are completely controlled by Liberals. Liberals dominate in education in American and it is a MESS!

Income "Inequality" is merely one more symptom of modern Liberalism. Reduce Liberalism and the inequality will lessen.

I would also like to add that America was founded on socialist principles which favored the European elist first and common Europeans second. Wealth distribution is socialism, socialism is based on the illusion of priviledges. When people feel privileged to anything, they really don't put in the effort to attain it.

The true solution to inequality is to buy out of a system that doesn't work for you. If more people bought out of the dog eat dog mentality, and regarded each other with dignity, a culture of kindness would become more of the norm and inequality would become much less of a problem.

Michael Burke wrote: Americans’ respect for competition and financial success reflects some of the core values that energize them and give meaning to their lives, and if these values lead to dysfunctional levels of inequality, that is a price that they currently seem willing to pay.

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I'd put a different slant on your thought.

There's a huge block of American wannabes. They have the greed; they have the desire; they just don't have what it takes to get rich. The system has them in debt up to their ears but they don't want to give up their fantasy of wealth.

I think it's a lack of genuine self-confidence. My guess is that they have a terrible fear of being ordinary.